In an early scene of the documentary “The Proving Grounds,” a
22-year-old Jon Jones
explains why he was compelled to make the trek from his home in
upstate New York to Jackson’s Mixed Martial Arts in Albuquerque,
N.M.

“I was training really hard there [in New York], and I was doing
really well, but I was always second guessing myself,” the UFC’s
current light heavyweight champion said. “I was always wondering if
I was getting what it takes to be a top-tier fighter.”

Such footage of Jones -- before he captured UFC gold, before he
appeared on ESPN, before he received his own Nike apparel line --
is part of what makes the film worthwhile viewing for the MMA fan
some four-plus years after it first began production in 2009.

“The
Proving Grounds” recently became available on Hulu.com and
is scheduled for a transactional release on platforms such as
Netflix, iTunes and Amazon in December.

In addition to the rare Jones content, the approximately
hour-and-a-half long documentary features many of the faces that
are still synonymous with success of the world-renowned gym today,
including Carlos
Condit, Diego
Sanchez, Julie Kedzie
and Donald
Cerrone, to name a few. And like Jones, many of the
aforementioned fighters, who were already successful at the time,
have gone on to reach even greater heights since the film was in
production.

“When we were shooting the film we tried to shoot in a fashion that
made it timeless and still tried to capture the essence of
Jackson’s -- whether it was [the gym] in the early days or
Jackson’s when this film was shot,” said director Landon
Dyksterhouse, who currently lives in Las Vegas and works as a DJ
under the alias The Mash-Up King. “[At the time of the filming] a
lot of the people from the camp are still on the verge of becoming
superstars.”

“The Proving Grounds,” which is produced by Shandon Dyksterhouse,
Nick Shuster and RD Whittington, also focuses on the structure the
camp and why it works as well as it does. Not surprisingly, much of
that story centers around the atmosphere created by co-founders
Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn.

“We wanted to capture the essence of the family. That’s the big
theme in the movie, and Greg’s mentorship for everybody and what
he’s done with that gym,” Dyksterhouse said. “This guy’s drawn from
all the greats and his idols, and brought it into the gym and made
it a place where learning and family and helping one another are
the important things.”

Jackson, who outside of his current stint as one of the coaches on
the Bellator “Fight Master” reality series is known to shun the
spotlight as much as possible, allowed “The Proving Grounds” crew
virtually unprecedented access to his team because the focus of the
film was exactly that -- the team. In the past, other filmmakers
had come to Jackson with more sensational pitches and failed. The
end product, which initially premiered in Albuquerque at the Hard
Rock Hotel and Casino -- one of the primary financial backers -- in
March 2011, seems to have satisfied Jackson -- for the most part,
anyway.

“I thought it was interesting, but that [Greg Jackson] guy was in
it way too much,” the trainer quipped. “The documentary was fun to
make.”

So what took the film so long to be ready for public consumption?
According to Dyksterhouse, there were plenty of suitors, including
the likes of Mark Cuban and Fox Sports, but uncertainty regarding
the interest in a full-length MMA documentary delayed the
release.

Eventually, “The Proving Grounds” signed a five-year deal with
Filmbuff , which serves as a
liaison of sorts with the various mediums that stream films and
other content. In the time since “The Proving Grounds” was
finished, a number of MMA documentaries have surfaced via online
streaming platforms including “Such Great Heights,” “Like Water,”
and “Fightville,” among others.

“The reason it took so long is a lot of people were still wondering
about MMA. Is MMA important enough to put on a major medium like
iTunes or Hulu?” Dyksterhouse said. “A lot of people started to
figure out there’s a huge audience for this.”